[00:00:00] Randy Salser: You know, with, with all credit unions navigating all this competitive pressures and all of the speed of fintechs and the speed of change around NACUSO can be right at the center of some of that dialogue and that ecosystem where fintechs, CUSOS, credit unions can talk and strategize and share with each other.

[00:00:20] Narrator: Welcome to 22 Minutes in Lending your go-to podcast for insights on all things lending from lending practices, regulatory updates. How to enhance lending efforts and more. In each episode, Vince Passione connects with industry leaders to discuss the latest trends and happenings around the lending industry.

[00:00:40] Narrator: Let’s dive in to the latest in lending.

[00:00:46] Vince Passione: Welcome back to 22 Minutes in lending. I’m your host, Vince Passione and today, I’m excited to welcome Randy Salser, the new President and CEO of NACUSO with over 25 years of leadership experience. Randy is perhaps most well-known for his time as President of NAFCU services prior to the merger with CUNA. Today we’ll talk about his new role and his vision for where the credit union industry is heading.

[00:01:06] Vince Passione: Randy, welcome to the podcast. It’s always great to see you.

[00:01:10] Randy Salser: Vince. Always great seeing you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.

[00:01:13] Vince Passione: Awesome. Alright, listen, new role, right? President and CEO of the National Association of Credit Union Services Organization. Big mouthful. Now I know what we call it NACUSO, but tell us about the journey to this point.

[00:01:24] Vince Passione: Right. Most of your time you spent at NAFCU, we’ve, we’ve sort of discussed, we’ve, we’ve certainly had podcasts on both sides when you’re at NAFCU, but love to hear the journey.

[00:01:33] Randy Salser: Sure, of course. So, uh, my dad was in the Marine Corps, so he was in the Marine Corps for 20 years. So we bounced around quite a bit as a kid.

[00:01:42] Randy Salser: Um, mainly Quantico, camp Lejeune, you know, the military bases on the East Coast. And then, uh, when I was 12, he retired to Central Florida, Ocala, Florida. Um, I thought I was gonna go do 20 in the Marine Corps, just like my dad. And, and, uh, he quickly let, he quickly let that be known that, uh, I had some opportunities to go play sports in college, play football in college, and he, he was not, uh, interested in having any discussion about the Marine Corps when I could actually go to college.

[00:02:11] Randy Salser: So, uh, we compromised and I went to college. So went out there and then, uh, came back to Florida and went to grad school. And, uh, after grad school moved to Sarasota and, uh, was gonna do an internship at Arthur Anderson, uh, which is where the world headquarters worked, which kind of shows you my age, but that’s where I met Dan Berger years ago, 20, 30 years ago, 25 years ago.

[00:02:33] Randy Salser: Yeah. And so when, um, he took over as CEO at NAFCU called me and, and, um. Said, Hey, you know, I’d like for you to come up and look at this. And, you know, I was honest with Dan and said, I don’t, I don’t know much about credit unions and I certainly don’t know much about nonprofits. And so, came up and, and, uh, interviewed and, and thankfully got the role learned about credit unions, fell in love with credit unions, and, uh, spent a large portion of my career.

[00:03:03] Randy Salser: Helping credit unions grow and compete and, and stay connected, you know, through NAFCU and, and now with NACUSO. Um, always fascinated with how credit unions share information and collaborate. So pretty, pretty natural fit at NACUSO. That, that’s great. Great. So what position did you play? Uh, defensive end. Yeah. Yeah, I was, uh, and what was,

[00:03:24] Vince Passione: was this a division one?

[00:03:25] Vince Passione: What, what?

[00:03:26] Randy Salser: Uh, NAIA. So smaller, smaller college. Yeah. Out in Kansas, Atchison, Kansas. So if you remember, uh, the early days of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad, railroad. That was the intersection of it. Yeah. Wonderful time though. In my, in my life,

[00:03:43] Vince Passione: I learned something new. I didn’t realize you and you and Dan went back so far.

[00:03:46] Vince Passione: That’s amazing. Mm-hmm. That’s a, that’s a, an interesting partnership in a long run. A long tenured one. Yeah. Let’s talk about the next chapter in your life, right? New role you’re in, in NACUSO. So what, first, what attracted you to it? And then when, when I think about, and I’ve had the opportunity and the privilege to be at, um, in the NACUSO meetings.

[00:04:02] Vince Passione: So, uh, and we’re, we are, we’re a member of it. Um, but A would attracted you to it. And then B, when you think about, boy, this is the biggest challenge I face and the one I’m so excited about in the NACUSO, what is it?

[00:04:14] Randy Salser: Sure. So I’ve known, you know, Jack Antonini and Guy Messick for years. Mm-hmm. I mean, for every year that I was at and after we met with them and talked to them and strategized and shared ideas and collaborated.

[00:04:25] Randy Salser: So I was always fond of NACUSO and. Ironically, what’s funny is I called a friend slash mentor of mine and who’s, uh, was at MasterCard for many, many years. And when this role opened I said, man, you, you should probably do this. NACUSO a great organization, maybe needs a little bit of course correction, but they’re, they’re in a great spot.

[00:04:44] Randy Salser: You should do this. And he kinda laughed and said, you know, this is, you should do this. And, and that literally. Struck and we talked and, and here we are. What’s exciting is that, um, the collaborative nature of what happens in credit unions, even when I, you know, was talking earlier about, you know, like I’m amazed at how much credit unions share with each other and are willing to open up.

[00:05:08] Randy Salser: Any of their ideas with each other. I came from the property and casualty insurance world, and we, we did not do that. That’s not, uh, not necessarily in our DNA. So, um, you know, with, with all credit unions navigating all this competitive pressures and all of the speed of fintechs and the speed of change around NACUSO can be right at the center of some of that.

[00:05:29] Randy Salser: Dialogue in that ecosystem where fintechs, CUSOs, credit unions can talk and strategize and share with each other. So I felt like such a great, it was such a great opportunity to be a part of something that has such a strong legacy going back now 40 years

[00:05:47] Vince Passione: Now, well, you touched on something I was gonna get to later, but I want to, I wanna get to it now.

[00:05:50] Vince Passione: ’cause we talk about that intersection of. Fintechs and, and certainly right. The, the changes that have happened in the last, and you and I have experienced it together in the last five years, which Oh yeah. Which is not that long in credit unions embracing new technology, using the CUSO structure to make investments, actually creating investment vehicles right through the CUSO structure, like the circle fund.

[00:06:15] Vince Passione: Um, talk to me about that. I mean, the last time I was at. the, the last NACUSO meeting I was at, it was pretty clear. It was probably two in the NACUSO meetings prior where there was something different about what was being discussed and what was happening at that meeting.

[00:06:32] Randy Salser: Sure. So I, I think what’s interesting is like there’s.

[00:06:36] Randy Salser: There’s appears to sometimes be this pole, right? There’s fintechs on this side, CUSOs on the other when, when really it’s just a CUSOs, just a platform for a structure of a tool in the toolbox, right? So it can be a FinTech, fintechs can be a CUSO. CUSOs can be a FinTech. I think the reason that fintechs have had such a rise is that.

[00:06:55] Randy Salser: Financial technologies had such, like you mentioned, such a rapid pace of evolving over the past five years and, um, being able to learn and understand how to do it. You know, you’ve got JP Morgan and Wells and these folks that can spend 150 million a quarter on r and d. How, how do credit unions you? Even not live in that space, much less compete with some of these larger financial institutions that are, you know, overwhelmingly outspending them.

[00:07:25] Randy Salser: And that CUSO model helps with that. So really more of the education around that FinTech space is finding ways to, uh. Maybe non-traditionally, uh, you know, joined together to share some of the costs, some of the overhead costs, but also share the intellectual capital at one institution across a few institutions, right?

[00:07:48] Randy Salser: It’s very hard to hire a data scientist, but if you can share that cost across two or three organizations from inside of CUSO as you’re doing. Some type of shared services on the backend for, for an example, right as your core or even your accounting function, there’s a huge opportunity in that space. And so the educational piece is incredibly important and that’s maybe why I wasn’t at that meeting unfortunately.

[00:08:14] Randy Salser: But, um. That may be why you saw a, a change in some of the content at the conference.

[00:08:22] Margie Click : Hello, this is Margie Click, CEO and President of Agriculture Federal Credit Union as a $360 million credit union. We’re always looking for ways to innovate and expand our financial solution offerings to attract new members.

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[00:08:47] Vince Passione: Now give us the overview, give the overview of your organization the way you see it, right? It sounds like, Hey, the mission here is truly to help credit unions as members understand. The value of a CUSO, different types of CUSOs, how you structure those CUSOs.

[00:09:01] Vince Passione: And there are some very interesting ones, especially recently now, the Circle fund was established, right? Sure. We’re seeing fintechs create these subsidiaries to do that.

[00:09:09] Randy Salser: Mm-hmm.

[00:09:10] Vince Passione: Um, and it’s spread across every tech. Right. It’s payments. I mean it’s, I mean, stable coin sewing. Right. We’ve got a ton of these going on.

[00:09:17] Randy Salser: Sure.

[00:09:19] Vince Passione: Am I missing anything as far as the structure goes? I mean, we’ll start with your organization and then maybe, Hey, there’s a thousand CUSOs. Is there an interesting area that I missed?

[00:09:28] Randy Salser: Yeah, you’re probably right. Like so. What’s interesting is. Is there a thousand like in the past that was something that was shared from the NCUA.

[00:09:36] Randy Salser: So we’ll work closely with, with Chairman Hotman to get that data because you know, very smart people. Smarter than me for sure say there’s probably closer to 1500 CUSOs, but. Kind of what’s in the database is about 1100. And so who really knows? It’s the NCUA. And so we’re gonna try to get some of that shared data, but for us, lemme stop you.

[00:09:59] Vince Passione: How does the NCUA know Because they have to re They have to, they they have to, they have to register. They report, okay. Yeah. They have to register.

[00:10:05] Randy Salser: Yeah. And that used to be public and so. It’s not anymore. And so we’ll go back to, and I don’t, um, it’s not something that’s, uh, you know, something that’s gonna trigger anything.

[00:10:19] Randy Salser: I just think it’s an ask that, that we need to do and, and talk to them about it. And look, they’re, they have their own struggles, right? With a lot of the cutbacks and things that are going on there. Um, so we we’re, we just want to ask him about it. But as we talk about NACUSO, you know. It’s not just an association, right?

[00:10:36] Randy Salser: It’s, it’s, it’s a community where there’s a lot of touch points Throughout the year, we’ll be strategic about how we spend our member dollars as we advocate on Capitol Hill. You know, we’ll do the, the very surgical type of advocacy work with, um, you know, third party vendor oversight, the 1% capital rule.

[00:10:58] Randy Salser: Member Business Lending Capital 1225. And a lot of those are driven behind something you mentioned like stable coins. Right? Because when we were on Capitol Hill two weeks ago, all they wanted to talk about was the Genius Act and how stable coins are gonna make this huge thing. So we talked about. Well, yes, maybe it’s a great tool in the toolbox, like we talked about before, but credit unions can’t issue stable coins.

[00:11:21] Randy Salser: They can custody them, but CUSOs can issue. But if, if they do, there’s that 1% capital rule that comes into place. So how do they actually have scale? There are some super innovative CUSOs right now that are, that are working on this initiative to try to provide that scale. But those are the ways that you can make changes on Capitol Hill.

[00:11:40] Randy Salser: Kind of tell that story. Um, ’cause you know, it’s tough. It’s tough to, mm-hmm. To find room to, to make any headway on Capitol Hill. So if you could tell some stories around it, it always helps. But we can help on that part. Certainly work with America’s credit unions, the leagues DCUC on the larger stuff, but they’re very good at it, right?

[00:12:00] Randy Salser: The tax fight, TCPA, some of the shiny objects that are out there, they’re working very hard on every day. That’s not us. Like they’re, they’re very good at it. We certainly will collaborate with them and, you know, participate in letters, Capitol Hill that they send up there. We, we would certainly sign on as an organization, but, we’ll, we’ll work on the stuff that’s more strategic towards chief sales and credit unions.

[00:12:24] Vince Passione: And Randy, I wanna go back 50, potentially 1500 CUSO. And I think, you know, last count is probably what, 4,300 something credit unions. I forgot the exact number, but I think it’s 43. That’s pretty close. Yes. 4,369 I think was the last number I saw on the market. Uh, that seems like an awful lot of CUSOs. So is part of your mission to try to clarify and say maybe some of these should be merged together or it’s not.

[00:12:50] Vince Passione: It’s really up to the credit union system and your job is to really educate. Yeah, I mean is there any sort of like mod, like are you trying to keep a fair market kind of thing? Is there some governance that goes on here to say that there’s just too many of them. There’s too many that are all doing Check Pro, you know, in the old days.

[00:13:06] Vince Passione: Check processing now, payment processing or

[00:13:08] Randy Salser: yeah,

[00:13:09] Vince Passione: too many folks all wanna launch a stable coin, qSOFA payments. Sure.

[00:13:14] Randy Salser: I think our role is to, uh, educate and bring folks together around those issues. And if it is to. You know, do more or less, that’s their decision to make. You know, because a lot of, some of these quesos are single owner, some of ’em are joint, some of them are many, many, right?

[00:13:31] Randy Salser: You have the Giants, like you mentioned, cuddle, origins now and Valera, but there’s quite a few that are just still single. Um, single owners that do member business lending or shared services. But, um, our job will be to educate around those things. And, and awareness is huge because there’s still that issue of, oh, I didn’t know that we do that, or, I didn’t know there was a CUSO out there.

[00:13:55] Randy Salser: Even at a thousand, there’s still a ton of, um. And it’s not necessarily, it’s just not knowing. Right. Some of them are very regional, some of them you just don’t think about when you’re running your businesses. And so ours is all around messaging and education.

[00:14:11] Vince Passione: Alright, so a month into the job, right? 30, 60, 90 day plan.

[00:14:15] Vince Passione: I’m sure you had that the day you had the idea that you would go do this, but

[00:14:18] Randy Salser: Sure.

[00:14:18] Vince Passione: Can you

[00:14:19] Randy Salser: share that with us? Yeah, it hasn’t, hasn’t changed much. You know, the first 30 days, listen, learn, uh, reconnect CUSO to its roots, called Jack right away. I called Guy Messi, called some of the folks that I’ve known for years and, and they picked up the phone immediately and were all in on, on helping and doing really anything.

[00:14:38] Randy Salser: So, um, that’s really the first 30 days. Listen and learn. Talk to as many members as I could. Get feedback good and bad. Um, it’s all very, uh. Helpful for me to get that perspective of our members and longtime members, new members, a lot of it. And so we spent most of the first 30 days on the phone, um, over the next 30 and even beyond is tighten the strategy a bit.

[00:15:03] Randy Salser: Uh, focus the strategy a little bit on a, on a few projects, not, you know, um, double digit, triple digit. You know, ideas and initiatives modernize a little bit, starting with our website, starting with our education platform portal, um, and continue to strengthen relationships with, with leagues, credit unions, CUSOs, um, regulators on Capitol Hill.

[00:15:29] Randy Salser: That’s a big piece over the next or the second 60. And then, you know, the third would be, you know, deliver a clear roadmap to the industry of, Hey, here’s what we, what we’re doing, here’s who we are. Elevate the value proposition for our members, um, and kind of launch the next evolution of the Reimagined conference, but one that has more than just the conference, right?

[00:15:52] Randy Salser: Peer groups, uh, regional round tables, multiple touch points throughout the year so that our message is. Consistently out there,

[00:16:01] Vince Passione: right

[00:16:01] Randy Salser: through the 12 months. I mean, you, you know, even all the way back to, to ncu, when we were doing those things, we had a lot of partners that wanted to do, let’s do four webinars in the first quarter.

[00:16:10] Randy Salser: And it was more about that sustained touch points and being in the marketplace and having your message out there where the industry’s able to consume it at a pace when. A, they want it and they can go to the website and get it any time, but also not just being there in the first quarter or the third quarter or when you have the time to do it, being that consistent force in the marketplace.

[00:16:35] Vince Passione: Now, Randy , I don’t think we’ve ever discussed this when you were at NAFCU, but that the queue, so what it’s a year from now, like what, what are the metrics you look at to say, okay, if I’m measuring success, what is, what’s success from the CUSO and how do you measure it?

[00:16:51] Randy Salser: Yeah, so we need, we have some work to do on rebuilding trust back with our members, and so I’ll measure it by our members and I’ll measure it, particularly on, if you get super granular, I’ll measure it on eyeballs, on webinars, webcasts, podcasts, and things that we.

[00:17:09] Randy Salser: Produce and distribute. But a lot of it’ll be based in that membership because we’ve, we do need to re-earn their trust over the next 12 months. And so that’s the, that’ll be the biggest metric of all is, you know. Mm-hmm. Have the members come back.

[00:17:24] Vince Passione: Not that we’ve had. And, and not to probe too deeply, you could pass on this if you want, but you said trust, so that means there must, you know, rebuilding trust.

[00:17:31] Vince Passione: So what do you think the biggest hurdles you’ve gotta overcome, where you said trust was somehow broken, what happened?

[00:17:39] Randy Salser: Uh, you know, I don’t know that that. A lot of the feedback you gave as well, right? It is just focus on what CUSO is and getting back to those collaborative roots and educating based around that, and then delivering that as well, right?

[00:17:54] Randy Salser: Putting the substance behind what our brand is, and so not just focusing on the brand, but focus on the substance that’s associated with that brand. And so that’s, that’s probably the biggest hurdle is. Finding ways to execute that in a sea of noise, right? There’s, you could go to a conference a week in this space and miss half of ’em, right?

[00:18:14] Randy Salser: Like there’s, there’s over 150 conferences a year that are very specific to credit unions. So how do you stand out in that field? It’s, you get very intentional about what you’re doing and you tell folks, but then you deliver that. Same thing, which is really based around education and, and telling your story, which is hard for folks to do.

[00:18:31] Randy Salser: Always has been, was hard at NAFCU. It’s hard in a lot of places. But, um, again, I think that’s the biggest piece is, is building around the education, um, portal that, that we can do and, and let our members tell their story. So

[00:18:46] Vince Passione: Randy, Randy, we got Reimagined coming up in April. Uh, you told us what you expect, but who should attend it?

[00:18:52] Randy Salser: You know, for us, credit unions I think would be a huge lift to the audience as well. We have a lot of chuo that attend and a lot of them are credit union employees, but credit union leaders would be a great addition. Um, and there is quite a few of them that come now, but more. Would be better. Uh, obviously CUSOs that we have great support from our CUSO friends, um, fintechs leagues, uh, any of the system partners that are, are interested in learning about, you know, clarity of the, the mission of CUSOs and connections and, and partnerships that they can act on immediately.

[00:19:29] Randy Salser: Uh, I think those folks would, would be. Great to be in attendance at the show.

[00:19:34] Vince Passione: So as someone who is supports a CUSO member, student lending, somebody who’s a partner of the system, someone who attends the CUSO, if I can give you a suggestion to make that happen, uh, I, I, that’s why I asked the mission, and I think the mission is right is, is absolute right.

[00:19:49] Vince Passione: How do you educate people about. The value of a CUSO, how to create a CUSO. There are lots of different options. I’ve seen Brian and Guy, they, they know how to do this right? They make it very easy. I’ve seen Nick Evans there explaining it. However, your point about how do you get the credit unions there on fintechs, a lot of those folks, they’re not looking to create a CUSO but they wanna become customers.

[00:20:13] Vince Passione: Yeah, of some of those CUSO  they wanna build partnerships. The, if you could create an A part of the agenda to do that where it’s not just, Hey, it’s a cocktail reception, go find your own way. But some type of like speed dating where, hey, if I’m interested in payments I can sit with with that group of people and talk about it, because that’s the part that I found interesting.

[00:20:36] Vince Passione: There were a couple of breakout sessions and I looked around the room and I said, these are CUSOs selling to other CUSOs. Uh, it got a little incestual. It’s just like money 2020 right after COVID. Yeah. You know, just a bunch of vendors that showed up to talk to each other. No banks or credit unions were there.

[00:20:50] Vince Passione: But it is a way, um, as, as someone who participates, Randy, uh, I would say if you created that some kind of format in, uh, the Reimagine Conference where there is this. Hey, it’s not sales as much, but it’s more, Hey, let them go out and let credit unions find them and say, I’m interested in a track of payments, or, I’m interested in stablecoin.

[00:21:13] Vince Passione: And being able to sit at a table with a bunch of folks who are doing that to really understand which CUSOs are doing it, why they’re different, because they wanna be a customer of it. They might not wanna form one.

[00:21:23] Randy Salser: Yeah, couldn’t agree more. And we are, we are, we’ve talked quite a bit about some of those ideas around some of the lunch and learns and some of these different dynamic sessions where they’re off to the side, but very specific and intentional about what they’re gonna talk about while they’re there.

[00:21:39] Randy Salser: And if. If they wanna sit at the table, that’s great. But know that this is a insurance related table where folks are probably gonna be talking about this. So if you don’t want to, uh, don’t be surprised if someone’s talking about it there. So we are talking about some, some new ideas to kind of freshen that up, but excellent points.

[00:21:56] Vince Passione: No, it makes sense. Makes sense. So last point thought, what’s one myth or misunderstanding about CUSOs you would wish every credit union would understand?

[00:22:04] Randy Salser: Uh, I, I, I guess the, the one that, and I’m not sure if it’s a myth or not, but the, that CUSOs are risky or, or complicated. Uh, in reality, they’re one of the safest and fastest ways to innovate, to create economies of scale, to mitigate risk, to find alternative revenue sources.

[00:22:27] Randy Salser: So for me, that’s one that, um, I wish more people knew. About the CUSO structure and, and how beneficial it is and can be, um, as a tool in the toolbox. You know, it’s one of them many tools out there. So that, that’s probably one that’s, that I’d lean into.

[00:22:46] Vince Passione: No, it makes sense and it makes sense and, and as a system, I mean, I.

[00:22:49] Vince Passione: There are very few that you’ve seen, right? Yeah. That I know that have quote unquote out and out failed. Right, right, right. Um, which, which speaks to the stability. No, that, that’s, that’s, that’s good. A good, good parting thought. Listen, Renny, thank you. It is always a pleasure. I know you’re busy, so I appreciate you taking the time out to do this.

[00:23:08] Vince Passione: That’s a wrap for our episode of 22 Minutes in Lending. Uh, it was a great conversation. Randy. To our listeners, thanks for tuning in. Be sure to subscribe, share, and join the episode with other folks and Randy. Thank you again and I found out something new about your football career. Thanks. It’s always great seeing you pal.

[00:23:25] Vince Passione: Awesome. Take care, sir.

[00:23:28] Narrator: Thank you for listening to the 22 Minutes in Lending podcast. We hope you enjoy today’s episode. You’ll find links to any resources mentioned in the show notes. If you’re enjoying our show, please be sure to subscribe and leave us a five star review.